The right focus will take you all the way.
The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.
by Keanu Reeves
What’s the one thing that we all need?
It’s not money, or success, or even love.
It comes before any of those things and is the most valuable resource on earth — the unobtanium of modern times.
Companies spend millions to get and keep it. People will give anything for it, including their lives.
Strangely enough, we all have an abundant supply of this resource, yet we commonly squander it and then wonder why we’re not seeing the results we want.
It’s time to pay attention to attention.
▶A Focused Perspective
We’re like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water — we can water flowers or we can water weeds. Josh Radnor
Every second you’re alive, you are bombarded by information. Your brain processes 11 million bits of information per second. In 2011 researchers estimated that the average American was bombarded with 34GB of information equivalent to 100,000 words daily during their leisure time.
This tsunami of data is overwhelming, and it’s increasing.
Your conscious brain can process only 50bits per second, so how can you make sense of all the data?
The brain uses amazing abilities to process multiple inputs in parallel. It makes mental models to classify what it detects and respond appropriately. An elite tennis player can track a tennis ball moving at over 150mph, move their body to intercept its course, raise their arm and hit the ball in order to return it where they choose. All this happens in milliseconds.
Even more important is what the tennis player doesn’t respond to. The ache of an injured muscle, a plane overhead, someone sneezing in the front row; those are all ignored. If they’re not, the player will fail to react in time and therefore miss the shot in an unforced error.
The player pays detailed attention to the inputs that matter in order to play a good game. In return, they receive applause, admiration, and money. The money only follows because they’ve proved that they can command the attention of others.
So attention is valuable both to give and to receive. What can you do with yours?